I did a site search and nothing came up and I'm assuming this is a bug. I hired Henning and during the course of his activities he was losing points in his marksmanship, leadership and strength. Now this wasn't due to dehydration or hunger, but from usage, i.e. shooting, training militia and moving/running. I did noticed that when I had hired him all his training bars on each attribute were maxed out, which at the time I thought was cool as he would level those soon. Instead, they decreased and, oddly enough, after losing two points of strength that training bar went back to the start point. I ended up dismissing him at that point so I'm not sure if his strength bar would start to increase.

While this behavior (mercs losing their stats, or not progressing at all) is vanilla behavior, I'm wondering... why exactly do we keep it? I mean, this is a mechanic that makes no sense (we get worse in stats by training them? wut?) and absolutely sucks ingame, as changing this requires a new game (or changing it via debugger).

Yes, vanilla code is holy etc., but would there actually be any harm in removing this (not making this as option, we have way too many of those)? After all, nobody ever complains that the IMP quiz is gone...

"Is there any way to get the blood to flow up the walls?"
"I don't see why not."

If you want, you can donate to me. This will not affect how and what I code, and I will not code specific features in return. I will be thankful though.

Yes, vanilla code is holy etc., but would there actually be any harm in removing this (not making this as option, we have way too many of those)? After all, nobody ever complains that the IMP quiz is gone...

All you have to do is tweak their MercProfiles.xml entry -- change the Evolution tag (which you know already). The Evolution tag is useful for varying the progress of stat and level gain for the older or 'intellectually impaired' Mercs. Both AV & VR have modified the Evolution tag to be used by more Mercs, and to eliminate any Merc losing stats. Mercs like Pops and Moses progress slowly, other Mercs like Henning & Len progress slow but not as slow as Pops & Moses, etc.

While this behavior (mercs losing their stats, or not progressing at all) is vanilla behavior, I'm wondering... why exactly do we keep it? I mean, this is a mechanic that makes no sense (we get worse in stats by training them? wut?) and absolutely sucks ingame, as changing this requires a new game (or changing it via debugger).

From what I have seen mercs with the "devolve" stat do not lose points for training but they will lose points over time.
Anyway I agree that this sucks because our little war doesn't last several years where the merc just sits around which could explain him getting older and losing some abilities.

However, it's only Larry (drunk) and Moses that have "devolve" set so I don't consider it a big problem. If a merc with NO_EVOLUTION loses points for no reason then this is a bug.

I looked in the mercprofiles.xlm and it shows him as 2 for evolution. So, he's supposed to devolve statwise. Bummer, I had never used him and was looking forward to trying him out...heavy weapons, teacher with high leadership and marksmanship seemed like a good combo.

I am fully aware that once can simply set this behavior off in MercProfiles.xml. But no new player is going to check that meaning, so at some point they will discover this and learn that the merc they hired is very useless without the game giving them any indication of this, and there being no fix apart from starting a new campaign.

"Is there any way to get the blood to flow up the walls?"
"I don't see why not."

If you want, you can donate to me. This will not affect how and what I code, and I will not code specific features in return. I will be thankful though.

I am fully aware that once can simply set this behavior off in MercProfiles.xml. But no new player is going to check that meaning, so at some point they will discover this and learn that the merc they hired is very useless without the game giving them any indication of this, and there being no fix apart from starting a new campaign.

True, true. I didn't mean that -- I meant why not just change the official, up-to-date, latest-release, v1.13 MercProfiles.xml so no Merc devolves?

EDIT: It doesn't matter to AV or VR if the code is changed or not, as both are based on 7609. I'm just thinking 'wouldn't it be easier to just change 2 numbers in an xml file'?

This is the old stable version and even there Henning is set to 1 on the SVN server. Strange...
Anyway, if you don't plan to use mods that are based on version 7609 you might as well try the current development build. A single click installer for that can be found here.

edmortimer wrote on Thu, 02 February 2017 07:21

I'm just thinking 'wouldn't it be easier to just change 2 numbers in an xml file'?

Actually no. If at all only Moses should be adjusted. Drunken Larry should stay as it is because the decline of his stats is a feature not a bug.